Saturday, June 30, 2012

Obama Pleading For Money While On Air Force One

President Obama sounded weary and maybe a tad worried
late Friday during a rambling conference call with campaign donors whom
he repeatedly begged to send money—and send it now.

“The majority on this call maxed out to my campaign last time. I
really need you to do the same this time,” the president said in a
highly unusual (and presumably legal) fundraising pitch from Air Force
One on his way back to Washington from Colorado Springs, where he’d been
assessing the terrible damage caused by uncontained wildfires. A
special phone on the government aircraft is dedicated to political calls
that are paid for by the campaign. [...]

The president’s 18-minute pleading—a recording of which was provided
to The Daily Beast by an Obama contributor—hardly sounded like a man
doing a victory lap after Thursday’s Supreme Court ruling upholding
Obamacare, as the Affordable Care Act has come to be known. Or, for that
matter, like a candidate who has been beating his Republican opponent
in recent polls of key battleground states.

Rather Obama sounded like a dog-tired idealist forced to grapple painfully with hard reality. “In 2008 everything was new and exciting about our campaign,” Obama said. “And now I’m the incumbent president. I’ve got gray hair. People have seen disappointment because folks had a vision of change happening immediately.”

About Me

I was born in Tombstone, Arizona, but moved to California in 1959 when labor strikes at the copper mines devastated the Arizona economy. I've been moving north ever since. Pullman is as far north as I care to live and I'm looking toward reversing the drift.